Alcott House

Alcott House in Ham, Surrey (now in Richmond in Greater London), was the home of a utopian spiritual community and progressive school which lasted from 1838 to 1848. Supporters of Alcott House, or the Concordium, were a key group involved in the formation of the Vegetarian Society in 1847.

History and ideology

Alcott House from the Wilderspin Papers

The prime mover behind the community was "sacred socialist" and mystic James Pierrepont Greaves, who was influenced by American Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott, and Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Together with his followers, who included Charles Lane – and the help of wealthy sponsors, Sophia and Georgiana Chichester – he founded Alcott House on Ham Common in Surrey in 1838. The Ham Common Concordium, as it came to be known, consisted of a working mixed cooperative community and a progressive school for children.

The community was dedicated to a regime of spiritual development and purification, in the words of Greaves, aiming to produce the "most loveful, intelligent and efficient conditions for divine progress in humanity". To this end the members submitted to an austere regime of early rising, strict vegetarianism (usually raw food), no stimulants, celibacy, and simple living, and experimented with various practices such as astrology, hydrotherapy, mesmerism and phrenology. The men grew their hair and beards long and wore loose fitting clothes, while the women defied convention by not wearing the traditional, restrictive corset.

Alcott House school was open to children from both inside and outside the community – the latter usually from radical parents who sympathised with its progressive educational stance. The curriculum emphasised moral education and the development of the child's innate spiritual gifts, teaching practical skills such as gardening and cookery as well as booklearning. Punishment was frowned upon and education aimed to produce "integral men and women", able to live in a truly cooperative society and not simply playing traditional roles.

In 1848, the community came to an end and the house was purchased by John Minter Morgan to provide an orphanage, though still run along vegetarian lines. In 1856 the foundation stone was laid of a new building on the site, South Lodge, which exists to this day. The new building has been converted to flats and the grounds have been developed as Bishops Close.

See also

• Fruitlands

References

• See also The New Age, and Concordium Gazette (pub. W. Strange, 1845) which was the journal of the Ham Common Concordium.

Further reading

• - especially chapter 11.